The viewer’s heart is won through the ears, not the eyes
From The Goal of Real Estate Video Is to Spark Interest:
“Buying a home is an emotional purchase, so residential real estate video is not informational — it’s aspirational and sells emotion and lifestyle.”
When I first started learning about real estate media, I noticed that many videos showcasing real skill from the videographer and editor still ended up feeling dull and boring because of overly neutral music. It filled the silence, but it had no emotion.
Since then, I have watched a huge number of real estate videos and realized that this is a very common problem in the industry. Professionals are happy to spend thousands on equipment, but it rarely crosses their mind to treat music as something that truly matters.
I’ve been meaning for a long time to write an article about how the musical component of real estate video is just as important — and possibly even more important — than the visual component when it comes to emotional impact on the viewer.
Recently, I came across an educational video for videographers that perfectly confirmed what I had strongly felt but hadn’t yet put into words:
“80% of what makes a video feel premium is the music. The song really does 80% of the work. And the footage is just a visual layer on top of the emotional foundation that the music has already built. The song is the video, and everything else around it is just decoration.
Go look at all the videos that you love, all the videos that inspire you. And I guarantee you: the song is either catchy, exciting, moving, motivating, and above all, it’s memorable. And this isn’t just my opinion. There is actual research that backs this up. The brain processes sound 80 milliseconds faster than it processes visual infrmation. This is primitive wiring in our brains. Sounds wire you to anticipate what’s coming. That means the first impression of your video is the song. It’s not the shot, it’s not the color grade. The music hits the brain before the viewer has even registered what they’re looking at. And there is a study out of Nature Neuroiscience that shows that the music releases dopamine, the feel-good chemical. The emotion fires before the rational mind catches up.
So when you pick the right song, you are literally programming an emotional response in the viewer before the first frame even appears. Music is what makes your video come alive.”
That’s why I place enormous importance on music selection. I’ve spent endless hours choosing soundtracks. The winning candidates have gone through a selection process that’s no less strict than actors casting in Hollywood. 🙂
The beauty and emotional impact of the chosen music is amplified then by the “Edit to beat” method. The combination of these two factors makes the video’s impact on the viewer truly powerful.
The music selected for the video and “editing to beat” are also used for Premium Cinematic Slideshows (videos made of still images using “cinematic” transitions). This perfectly explains the phenomenon mentioned in the product description:
“Surprisingly, our Cinematic Slideshows create an emotional experience that feels more like a real video than simply browsing a static photo gallery, as with regular slideshows offered by other photographers. And all at a fraction of the cost of a video! No wonder one client called this kind of tour “Almost a video — almost for free.””
Really, “The song is the video, and everything else around it is just decoration”!
You can choose the soundtrack for your Cinematic Slideshow or video!
Typically, agents simply order a YouTube product without going into details, delegating the music selection to me with a “let the professionals handle it” approach — and you can do the same. However, you can choose the music according to your own taste or your client’s preferences. The soundtracks that have passed Hollywood-level casting can be listened to here. Just give me the track number when you place an order.
You may notice that some music files include a limit — for example, “max 45 photos.” This does not matter for video, but it does matter for a Cinematic Slideshow: because of the edit-to-beat technique, that soundtrack can include no more photos than specified.
For example, “max 45 photos” means the track has only 44 beats, so there is simply no place to fit more than 45 photos.
This limitation is worth paying attention to when listing a large house or a condo with many amenities, where the number of photos may reach the maximum of 50. I certainly don’t want to remove extra photos from the slideshow!
Why do I let you choose the music? Because of one realtor. His client felt the music in the video was too energetic and asked me to replace it with something slower, which I did. But then the realtor said the new music sounded like a funeral. To stop this endless communication, I uploaded the soundtracks to Google Drive and said, “Choose whatever you like.” The realtor chose the track himself, and everybody were happy.